


The one with the note in the book

by akachankami



Series: Shippers Anonymous [6]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akachankami/pseuds/akachankami
Summary: Prompt:Elsie is sorting through the books in his pantry looking for one of the ledgers from last year to verify the costs as requested by his Lordship. As her fingers walk along the spines of his leatherbound tomes, she discovers an unexpected treat, a volume of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She opens the cover and finds a dedication: For my Elsie, keeper of the key to my heart, forever yours, Charles.





	The one with the note in the book

**Author's Note:**

> Ah kids, get your handkerchieves out for this one's odd for me

Elsie almost drops the book, but thinks better than to draw unwanted attentions and balancing it under her arm she keeps looking for what she was there in the first place.

Later, when the hallways are dark and all the doors are closed for the night, she retires in her room and flips trough the pages of poems where words or lines or sometimes even entire paragraphs have been underlined. Occasionally there are notes by his handwriting and dried flower petals.

Elsie snorts, old fool… He must have left it there for her when he moved to Haxby years before.

She can only close the book, let it rest on her bedside table, place her glasses on top of it and turn the light off with a sigh. He could have told her… but he never did, not once when they met on their half days off, not even when he retired.

Elsie shifts on the bed and thinks of all the things she'd tell him now. She doesn't need to make a list, she has words and lines and whole paragraphs underlined.

She'll bring the book next time she visits his grave, in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> ... told you


End file.
